Forty Years of Friendship. Donations from the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado

This exhibition acknowledges and pays tribute to the ten of thousands of Friends who have offered their support to the Museum. It does so by bringing together for the first time all the works donated by the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado and those it has participated in acquiring over the course of its four decades of existence thanks to the generosity of its members. Since the Société des Amis du Louvre was founded in 1897 with the aim of “enriching the collections of the museum”, as stated in its statutes, the donation of works of art became a founding aim of the museum friends associations which, taking the French example as their model, began to proliferate first in Europe and soon after in the rest of the world.

The Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado was established in December 1980. Although its founding aims expressed in its statutes were broader in scope than those of the friends of the Louvre, namely “Supporting the cultural activities of the Museo del Prado, spreading knowledge of it and contributing as far as possible to the artistic holdings of its collection”, the Fundación immediately set to work to contribute to the Museum’s essential core: its collection. This endeavour has continued to the present day, as the four sections into which the works in the exhibition are divided reveal, illustrating the different ways in which the Fundación has contributed to enriching the Prado’s holdings, often through formulas that distinguish it from other donors.

With the aim of stimulating donations and encouraging members of the Círculo Velázquez to become involved in enriching the Museum’s holdings, in 2018 the Fundación established the Prints and Drawings Committee. Its members are committed to making special contributions which allow for the donation of works of this type proposed by the corresponding department in the Prado. The Committee’s efforts began to see results in the first year of its existence with the donation to the Museum of a print by Goya and a drawn copy of it by Isidoro Brun. From the outset these works indicated the direction the Committee would take as all its donations have been related to the work of Goya. At the same time they were contributions that continued and renewed the long-standing connection between the Fundación and Goya, the artist most extensively represented in this exhibition. The first exhibition organised by the Fundación was in fact Goya in Madrid Collections, held in 1983 and curated by Enrique Lafuente Ferrari, its first president and a reputed specialist on the artist.